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56 Out of the Inferno D~browski managed to reach England in 1944 and later served with the Polish First Armored Division. He completed his studies after the war and worked as an engineering technician. Now retired, he pursues an interest in the postal history of Poland. BOGNA DOMANSKA One morning I heard a banging on my apartment door. I had allowed my apartment to be used by the Rada Pomocy Zydom (Council for Aid to Jews), so many Jews showed up there. The address was No.5 Mlawska Street. It was very close to the ghetto and therefore was very dangerous. My older son opened the door that morning, and Dr. Alfred Borenstein entered. He was almost unconscious, propping himself up with a stave of wood. We knew him to be a charming, cultured man who spoke Polish well; he did not have Semitic features. He and his wife, along with several other Jews, were living on Leszno Street with a Polish family. Dr. Borenstein told us that the previous evening two Poles had stopped him and demanded twenty thousand zlotys. If these men did not receive the money, they threatened to denounce him to the Germans. He told them he did not have that much money, but he would try to get what they wanted by the following evening. Last night he and his wife had been so terrified that they had taken a large dose of sleeping tablets. This morning he had been unable to awaken his wife, and indeed he himself was barely conscious. He had come to ask for help. I urged Dr. Borenstein to sit down and told my sixteenyear old son to get him some tea while I tried to get the money from Wladyslaw Bartoszewski [a prominent member of Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews]. I could not find Bartoszewski or any of my other superiors. I returned, after about an hour, with nothing. Dr. Borenstein decided that he had to get back to his wife. Personally , I thought it very likely that she was no longer alive. However, my son and I took him to the nearest streetcar to Leszno, which left from Teatralny Square. It was still early and there was an empty streetcar waiting. The young conductor must have realized what was going on, because when I asked him to take Dr. Borenstein to Leszno, he assured me that he would not let the older man get off if it was 57 Bogna Domar'lska unsafe. Since Dr. Borenstein was not himself, my son volunteered to accompany him. Some time later my son rushed back home in a state of shock. As the streetcar neared Leszno, the conductor stopped the vehicle because a crowd of civilians and Germans had gathered there. But that did not prevent Dr. Borenstein from rushing off to look for his wife. The crowd had gathered because all the occupants of the apartment building where Dr. Borenstein lived had been taken out and executed, including a Polish family and their children and all the Jews. Dr. Borenstein was one of the casualties. In the Council for Aid to Jews, I was involved, among other things, in the transfer of money to Jews. I often dealt with Fajner, who looked like an old Polish szlachcic (aristocrat). There was relatively little problem in transferring sterling or American dollars, since the bundles of money were not very bulky. However, zlotys were a different matter. Tens of thousands of notes were involved. The money was brought to me in large bundles of wood that had been hollowed out. The courier who delivered them always carried some spare wood for sale in case he was stopped by the Germans along the way. The caretaker of my apartment building asked why I needed so much wood. I told her a story about my preference for wood over coal, and she was apparently satisfied because there was no trouble. The most terrifying day of my life was the day I went into the ghetto. A letter had come to the Council for Aid to Jews from a Polish officer who was a German prisoner of war. The letter was for his wife, who was of Jewish extraction. At that time she was looked after in the ghetto by Father Marceli Godlewski who, despite his rather rightwing views, had insisted on remaining in the ghetto looking after his parishioners-converts from Judaism-in the parish of All Saints at Grzybowski Square. Both...

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